Attacks on refugee homes are an ever more regular feature of far-right criminality as Germany seeks to house and integrate more than one million asylum seekers who arrived in the country in 2015.

Story continues below…

Earlier in January public broadcaster ARD reported that there had never been as many attacks on refugee homes as in 2015, which saw a huge rise in such criminality in comparison with the previous year.

Whereas in 2014, 199 acts of criminality against refugee home were recorded by the Federal Office of Criminal Investigations (BKA), in 2015 that number shot up to 924.

Of the nearly 1,000 attacks, 76 were attempted arson.

One of those cases went before a court in Hagen on Friday, where an ex-fireman is accused of attempted murder after setting fire to a refugee home in the west German town in October 2015.